And some users flatly consider them great smoking-cessation devices — a combination that allows users to wean themselves off of nicotine and satisfy the tactile practice of using their hands and mouths in social settings, even when others are smoking traditional cigarettes.

E-cigarette flavoring can be loaded with anywhere from 0 to 24 milligrams of nicotine to provide the nicotine jolt that smokers say they get with traditional tobacco products.

The FDA may be proposing regulations on electronic cigarettes in the very near future. “The FDA intends to propose a regulation that would extend the agency’s ‘tobacco-product‘ authorities — which currently only apply to cigarettes, cigarette tobacco, roll-your-own tobacco and smokeless tobacco — to other categories of tobacco products that meet the statutory definition of ‘tobacco product,’” said Jenny Haliski, the FDA’s press officer for tobacco-related inquiries.

Lawmakers seen as cool to levy on electronic cigarettes

Aides to Governor Deval Patrick have dropped an initiative for a tax on e-cigarettes after gauging the political appetite among lawmakers and finding it limited, legislative officials said.

Administration officials checked in recent weeks to find out whether members of the Legislature. who have shied from some of the tax hikes that Patrick has previously proposed, would go along with a levy on the devices, which offer an experience similar to smoking tobacco. The administration was considering including the tax in the budget Patrick will submit next week.

He saved his worst ban for last. Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s nanny-state policies have left a trail of damage. His defeated soda ban, the ban on food donations to homeless shelters and other antics have cost New Yorkers money, jobs, food choices, and even their freedom to give charity.

But a bill passed by the City Council in December, and signed by Bloomberg as one of his last official acts, could cost New Yorker’s their lives. The city’s wide-ranging anti-smoking law now forbids the use of relatively harmless vapor from e-cigarettes wherever cigarette smoking is banned, not only in bars and restaurants, but in parks and on beaches. For New Yorkers trying to keep their New Year’s resolution to quit smoking, the ban is a bust.

Demand for electronic cigarettes is booming, but experts are not convinced they help people to quit smoking. Whatever the case, I am still a fan

Stephanie Rafanelli

It all started quite early on. My first words, uttered with a not-so-cherubic look on my face and a strange baby puffing sound, were: “Light! Light!” It was as if I had come out of the birth canal sucking not on my thumb, but a mini-Marlboro. Much excitement and hand-flapping ensued whenever my grandfather fired up his pipe after Sunday lunch. Family legend has it that my parents wafted my dummy through clouds of smoke just to shut me up, such was my morbid nappy-stage fascination. Age was no barrier: everyone loved smoking in the 70s.